When Maya Angelou and James Baldwin Walked into a Bar…
A great–and true!–story, via Feminist Law Professors’ Bridget Crawford: When Maya Angelou and James Baldwin Walked into a Bar… Maya Angelou recently donated 343 boxes of her papers to the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black…
Crunk Feminist Revlections on generations of female rappers
I encourage you to read crunkista’s post on Crunk Feminist Collective. It raises some important considerations/issues/questions in discussions about different generations–and competition among different generations–of female rappers. http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/lil-kim-vs-nicki-minaj/ Most interesting–and important, IMHO–is crunkista’s claim that the underlying issue here is…
A few songs (more or less) about AIDS
It’s World AIDS Day. Since nobody seems to talk about AIDS anymore (b/c it’s not so much a problem for privileged men anymore, and more of a subaltern women’s problem), I thought I’d post some of my favorite songs more…
Some Initial Thoughts on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”
So, I need to spend some more time with Kanye West’s new album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” You can count on some more developed posts about it; those are on the slate for winter break. However, I thought I’d…
London’s Burning, #1: Lee Edelman Fought the Law, and the Law Won
This is the first in my “London’s Burning” sub-series of posts on punk music and queer futurity/anti-futurity debates.* Here, I want to cover Judith Halberstam’s particularly illuminating critique of Edelman. Halberstam argues that Edelman calls on a supposedly critical “negativity”…
Contort Yourself: A follow-up to Shannon Sullivan’s SPEP paper on experiencing white identity as a “joyful passion”
SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) was last weekend, and Shannon Sullivan gave a paper on Nietzsche, Spinoza, and white identity. The paper was bold and provocative (and evidence why people need tenure), and the discussion was heated and…
“Cruising Utopia” with the radio on ???: Jose Munoz’s utopian queerness and !!!
Approaching Acid Jose Munoz’s Crusing Utopia focuses mainly on visual, performance, and literary artworks. However, there are a few musical references in the text; for example, the last chapter is titled “Take Ecstasy With Me,” after the Magnetic Fields’ song…
Plastic Bag: Xray Spex as critique of Katy Perry’s liberal individualism
I was listening to Katy Perry’s most recent single “Firework,” and I noticed that this song used a “plastic bag” metaphor to connote the supposedly alienated, mass-produced subject of post-industrial consumer society. This then reminded me of one of my…
The Slits — Peel Sessions
Does anyone else hear Sonic Youth avant la lettre in this Slits performance of “Love and Romance”? Listen to the timbre, the general noisiness of the guitars, the pitchiness and otherwise generally unmasterful vocals, etc.
3AM Eternal: the role of music in the queer futurity/anti-futurity debates
I’m currently working on some projects that focus on the role of music in the recent and ongoing futurity/anti-futurity or relationality/anti-relationality debates in queer theory. While these debates are wide-ranging, I’m focusing mainly on the work of Lee Edelman, Jose…
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